The Waiting Gate
by J Merrill Forrest
Publication date: October 27th 2017
Publisher: Hashtag Press
BLURB
Alex
Kelburn is a psychic medium who knows full well where we go when we die for he
has been there. But what about those in the grip of severe dementia whose minds
have disconnected? Where, indeed, do they go? He knows he must find the answer.
Not only for Erin, the caring, compassionate nurse who has asked it, but also
for his own wife, and for friends Kallie and Trish, and the thousands of others
who are grieving and bewildered because they have loved ones who have gradually
disappeared until only their physical selves remain.
Working
on the case of an unidentified little girl whose remains have been discovered
in a shallow grave, he is gradually led to a new and wonderful understanding of
just what is on the Other Side …
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The
Book Junkie Reads . . . Interview with J Merrill Forrest author
of ‘Flight of the Kingfisher’ and ‘The Waiting Gate’
How would you
describe your style of writing to someone that has never read your work?
I
write about people who are coming face to face, perhaps for the first time,
with what dying and death really means, either because it’s happening to them
or to someone they love. Before I begin to write I let the characters and their
stories unfold in my mind until I really feel I know them. I live with them daily, I allow myself to
feel their emotions, I do my research, and I know I have enough to get started
when I sit at my laptop and the story simply flows from my thoughts to my
fingers. My novels are classified as fantasy because of their supernatural
element, but although my descriptions of the Afterlife might not be accurate (I
rather think that mere language would be inadequate anyway), I hope I am able
to convey the fact of its existence.
Do you feel that
writing is an ingrained process or just something that flows naturally for you?
I
know of writers who work to a highly organised schedule, making copious notes
and flow diagrams of the plotlines before writing a set number of words each
day. I’ve tried these methods and they just don’t work for me. A story begins
in my mind, just the merest glimmer, and I just have to let it work itself out
in its own good time. I’m fortunate that I can type as fast as I think, and
sometimes I might work a couple of hours here and there, other times work
through the night if the story is really flowing. My first draft is always the
bare bones, sketching out the characters and their circumstances, then I go
back in again and again filling in the detail until I feel I’ve got it ready
for other eyes to see. I never try to force it, I’ve learned that the stories
will give themselves up to me only when they are ready to be written.
Do you have a
character that you have been working on for a long time that still isn’t quite
ready, but fills you with excitement to work on the story?
I
wrote a short story many years ago about brilliant young girl who forges a
telepathic link with her best friend who’s struggling at school. She’s trying
to help, but it has tragic consequences. Every now and again this girl pops
into my head and I know there’s so much more to tell about her.
If you could spend one
week with five fictional characters, who would they be?
1) My own
Alex Kelburn, the handsome and charismatic psychic medium. I would bombard him
with questions about what it’s like to a medium.
2) Time
travelling Henry from Audrey Niffenegger’s ‘The Time Traveller’s Wife’.
3) Dragon-rider
Lord Jaxom from Anne McCaffrey’s ‘The White Dragon’. A telepathic link and an unbreakable
bond with a dragon? Yes please!
4) JRR Tolkien’s
wizard Gandalf. I’d just keep pouring the wine while listening to all his
adventures.
5) Faith
Aycliffe from ‘Flint and Roses’, the second of Brenda Jagger’s Barforth
trilogy. She’s a mid-19th century woman with a 21st
century spirit. I’ve read this book so many times since I got it in 1983 it is
literally falling apart.
Can you share your
next creative project? If yes, can you give a few details?
I
have four projects I’d like to work on, I just don’t know which one will come
first:
-
a fundraising book for Guide Dogs for the Blind, based on my experience raising
a Guide Dog Puppy from 7 weeks to 13 months old. Throughout the year I took
hundreds of photographs of him and captioned them, so the story will be told in
pictures from his point of view.
-
the story about the telepathic girl mentioned earlier, as yet untitled. The
narrator will be her friend, now in her middle years and looking back at what
happened during her school days in the time before mobile phones and Internet
technology.
-
republish ‘Orders From Above’, a light-hearted comedy about angels causing
havoc in a small Wiltshire village. It
was published in 2013 but I wasn’t happy with the quality of the book or the
way the publisher handled the marketing and I took back the rights last year. I
love this story and feel it deserves a second chance.
-
a third Alex Kelburn novel. I don’t know yet where this one is going to go. The
ideas are so fleeting I can’t grasp them yet, but so far I have a character who
is horrifically injured in a traffic accident and doesn’t feel she has anything
to live for. I need lots of long walks in the countryside with a dog to let the
story develop and reveal itself to me in its own time, as they all do.
Teaser:
“Where do you think they go, the
patients who no longer seem to be aware of themselves or their surroundings? I
mean, take Simon. One moment he’s angry and shouting, the next it’s as if he’s
simply left his body behind and gone somewhere. Some of the patients are like
that all the time, never having lucid moments at all, and I’ve always wondered
… where do they go?”
Author
Info
J
Merrill Forrest’s deep interest in the supernatural is a major theme in her
writing. For more than thirty years Jane has researched her subject, visiting
psychics, mediums, Spiritualist churches and séances, always keeping an open
and questioning mind, hunting down evidence.
At age
40, J Merrill Forrest followed her dream of going to university and gained a BA
(Hons) in English Literature, and returned to academia ten years later to gain
her MA in Creative Writing. It was during this time she began to work on her
novel ‘Flight of the Kingfisher’, published in 2015, which deals with the
emotive and polarising subject of life after death and introduced psychic
medium Alex Kelburn. He returns in her latest novel, ‘The Waiting Gate’, the
main theme of which is dementia and what happens to those who ‘disappear’ as
the disease takes hold.
J
Merrill Forrest is also the author of 'Orders from Above' published in 2013.
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